Pediatric Specialty Care in Ohio

Jaclyn:

My name is Jaclyn. I am Bryson's mother.

It all started when he was eight years old. In March of 2015, we had a fire burning in our backyard, and he decided to pour some gasoline onto it out of our gas tank. Well, the flames met the fumes and then blew up the gas tank, which therefore blew up all over him. Luckily, a bunch of neighbors had pulled over, stopped by, helped put him out.

He then got onto a care flight, and I sped down 75. When I walked in, there was just so, so many people around him that I couldn't even see how he was doing and what was going on. Almost instantly they said, "We're going to Shriners."

Speaker 2:

I do remember Bryson well because he was an 87% burn. The key for our burn group is to have a multidisciplinary team approach. So it is a combination of occupational therapy, physical therapy, nutritional evaluations, child life, care coordinators to manage the family issues but also help allow for social reintegration when the children return back to home. I think what's also important is to address the psychological reaction.

Kimberly Tran, Rehabilitation Manager:

Typically, when a patient comes in, a therapist actually see them from day one. We will evaluate their range of motion, their strength, their activities of daily living, how they're walking. And anything that we see as deficits or not functional, we play a role in that to make sure that they can become functional again.

Speaker 2:

The wraparound care is also defined by the fact that we follow the children from when they're injured to when they're an adult, and that is not something you see in other facilities. We are there to help with growth spurts that cause scar contracture bands. We're there to help with any other skin-related issues that might occur because of the burn to help facilitate your recovery.

Kimberly Tran:

It is exceptional care, and we treat every family as our family.

Jaclyn:

Shriners Children's in Ohio has tremendously helped my family, mainly my son. Like I said, without them, he wouldn't be here at all. They make these kids feel comfortable. And anything that they want to do, any type of person they want to be, they're right there behind them, helping them out and getting them to be the best people they can be.

A lot of times I'm just truly inspired and awestruck by the strength of all these children, and it's all due to Shriners.

[Shriners Children's Ohio logo, shrinersohio.org]

LaTasha:

My name is Latasha and this is Ava Lynn, and she is being treated at Shriners Ohio. We found out at our 20 week ultrasound, at the body scan of our 20 week ultrasound, that she was going to have cleft lip palate. We had no idea when she came out what she would look like, how severe it would be, but we knew that she would be in great hands at Shriners.

Scott Rapp:

What separates the Shriners Children Ohio system from the other children hospitals that I work in, it's really the multidisciplinary care and the ability to start a plan and complete it no matter what is involved.

With plastic surgery you really treat all the entire body. We really have to be experts in anatomy, because we do address all aspects of patient care. Cleft lip and palate is an entity where one in 500 children are born with. It's very common actually.

Christopher Gordon:

Cleft lip and palate is kind of it's own subspecialty in our field, where babies are born with either a missing portion of the lip and nose, and then down in the bone and the teeth, and then the palate itself is divided in half. Sometimes that goes along with a very small jaw, which can cause other problems like feeding problems, airway problems.

LaTasha:

He really took us and he said, "Stop worrying. It's going to be okay, trust me." So from that point on we just kind of trusted him. We've asked so many questions, but he was always there to answer any of the questions that we had.

Scott Rapp:

The greatest single benefit that I feel is that they're able to walk in and to look at what needs to be accomplished, to be able to never have to think about anything else except for what's at the best interest of the patient.

Christopher Gordon:

It creates a camaraderie and a team feeling that I've never really seen anywhere else. You just got a really dedicated group of people who love what they're doing.

Amanda Fields:

What we find is meeting families where they are, making sure their basic needs are taken care of, and just making sure that they're comfortable so that they know that we are treating their child just like we would treat our child.

Scott Rapp:

It's really every single person that they encounter makes them feel special. So for them to at least feel a little bit more at home, a little more safe with us, then I think that really translates to their outcome, and it's not just the technical surgical outcome. It's the overall outcome for the patients and their families.

LaTasha:

We didn't expect to have such amazing nurses and doctors, but when we found Shriners it's truly life changing, not only for her, but for all of us, and it's just been... It's made all the difference in her recovery and in our life.

Jaclyn:

Shriners Children's in Ohio has tremendously helped my family. Without them, he wouldn't be here at all. We couldn't have made it without Shriners.

Speaker 2:

I came here 21 years ago and I fell in love with this place because I immediately got a sense of family from the staff. The wraparound care that we provide is not just for the patient, it is also for the family, so we're a family focused center of care.

Randy White, MHA, MBA, FACHE, Administrator:

To come in to the Shriners systems mean that we have someone here that we love and we're going to get to know not only them but their family and we'll give them world-class care. Our model's really a special relationship, not only with our clinical staff and our patients, but it's that unnamed donor that's standing in the background there that's never seen or many times not identified who really helps us to pull this mission through.

Dennis Hewatt, Chairman, Board of Governors:

We've had a hundred-year history of raising money to help kids. So it puts us in an awesome position to be able to do what is best for the child, and that's a pretty great thing to put in place.

Jaclyn:

They have supported us in every which way possible. Anything I've ever asked of them, they've been right there. Now they just continually give us more and more opportunities for him to have new adventures and experiences that he never would've experienced. And they make these kids feel comfortable and anything that they want to do, any type of person they want to be, they're right there behind them, helping them out and getting them to be the best people they can be.

Speaker 2:

What's unique about our facility at this time is we are one of the first to become a hospital within a hospital in the Shriners system. And we treat a variety of disease processes going from acute burn and their management, but also with people who have congenital plastic needs for reconstructions. No matter how big or small your burn is, it's important to us to manage and help you get through that trauma. No burn is too small for us.

Randy White:

With our system, we're really able to take care of the kid for the length of time that our doctors and our specialists and our nurses and our therapists feel that the kid needs to be here.

Kathy Zaeske, MSN, RN, Director, Patient Care Services :

It is our dedicated staff that are only taking care of burns or plastic surgery patients. It's all we do every day, so we have an expertise in it.

LaTasha, patient's mother:

We didn't expect to have such amazing nurses and doctors. But when we found Shriners and how you guys treated us as a family, it just was life-changing. And how we can depend on you guys, it's truly life-changing, not only for her, but for all of us.

John Bull:

We are the experts in burn care. We are the experts in the plastic surgeries that we do, in cleft lip and palate and the craniofacial. And we want make sure that they come see us first.

Scott Rapp, M.D., Plastic Surgeon:

We're actually able to bring in people who have very rare situations and still be able to provide them excellent service.

Christopher Gordon, M.D., FACS, FAAP, Plastic Surgeon:

The Shriners, many people think of traditionally as being kind of a burn hospital and then some orthopedic hospitals. But for 30 plus years, the Cincinnati and now the Ohio location has focused heavily on cleft lip and palate, jaw surgeries, kind of the pediatric plastic surgery and craniofacial surgery diagnoses. I mean, Raquel is a great example of that, and what she had was much more complex version of a clefting condition, but she was an otherwise healthy kid. She was starving to death because nobody knew how to feed her.

Scott Rapp:

In the Shrine, you're able to walk in and look at what needs to be accomplished and you know that the team will do their best and make that happen. To be able to never have to think about anything else except for what's at the best interest of the patient is very, very valuable.

John Bull:

And our doctors are the ones that do the treatments and our doctors are the ones that say when it's time to go home or not go home, or this is what they need going forward. No one else does that. There isn't an insurance company that does that. That's the basis of what Shriners is all about. We take care of our kids. I would stack up our results with anywhere in the world. We help people, this is all we do.

Daryl, Patient's Grandfather:

There was a fire in James's parents' apartment. It turned out to be a five-alarm fire. James was at that point taken by ambulance to Shriners Hospital. Staff and the crew at Shriners jumped in immediately. The care that was given to James was beyond description. It's a miracle what they do and they jump in when everyone else is afraid to dip their toes in the water. They jump in head first.

Arlene Burns, BSN, RN, CPN, PACU Nurse:

I would always think if I could just show you the future, that there is a light at the end of this tunnel.

Sarah O'Neal, Child Life Specialist:

Being able to provide that specialized care that they need and deserve is really the heart and soul of what we're about.

Amanda Fields, MSN, RN, Manager, Inpatient Care Unit:

What we find is meeting families where they are, making sure their basic needs are taken care of, and just making sure that they're comfortable so that they know that we are treating their child just like we would treat our child.

Scott Rapp:

It's really every single person that they encounter makes them feel special and it's a scary thing. So for them to at least feel a little bit more at home, a little more safe with us, then I think that really translates to a better outcome. And it's not just the technical surgical outcome, it's the overall outcome for the patients and their families.

Christopher Gordon:

I just think they'll get the best care that's available and they'll come out of it feeling like they're part of a family.

Taylor, patient's mother:

Shriners is a warm, welcoming place. You don't feel like you're going to the hospital.

Speaker 2:

What is important is to get the child the care that that child needs.

Christopher Gordon:

Then you can see what we're left with, which is a happy girl who's, I think, going to grow up and have a normal life. I think you just see it in the quality of the results and the compassion and how everybody just works as a team and how the families feel that. I think pretty much everybody goes away happy.

Hilcy, patient's mother:

Shriners is a miracle for me. This doctor. All the people here. It's a big miracle for us.

[Shriners Children's Ohio logo, shrinersohio.org]